The gun wasn't fired, but it still claimed a victim

A lady named Teresa Scott is mad. Mad at schools and the people who run them, mad at a court system she says failed her. Two months ago, her son had a gun pointed at his head, in school where he was learning math.

"Who is going to be held accountable for my son's health after all this?" she asked me.

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I don't blame them for being mad and anxious how their son will handle today and tomorrow and the rest of his life. The Scotts have two sons. James, 12, and Westyn, 10. Westyn panics when James is out of his sight.

"He follows me around all the time because he is scared," James Scott said of his little brother. James Scott does what great big brothers do. He lets his brother tag along and avoids problems.

"My daddy taught me not to have any trouble," James Scott said.

"We keep a tight leash on them," David Scott said of his sons.

Why so much concern in the Scott family? Westyn showed me. He held his finger to his forehead and said, "This is how he held the gun."

In mid-April, Westyn Scott was the victim of a crime that cannot be prosecuted -- a gun was held to his head by a fellow student at York Road Elementary School. Westyn somehow found the courage to ask for that bullet out of the chamber of that loaded and cocked pistol, then told his teacher.

Another kid in the class, the one who brought the gun, was found incompetent to be charged with a crime, prosecutors said. No problem, said David Scott.

"I don't want a kid to have a criminal record all his life, to not be able to get a job or go to college," he said. "It'll ruin his life. I don't want that."

Takes courage for David Scott to think about another father's son when his son could have easily been dead.

But the Scotts want to know who will be held accountable for what happened to their son, and now, all of them?

The answer is no one.

"Does that boy right now know right from wrong?" Teresa Scott asked of the kid who brought the gun to school.

A question to which every parent ought to hope the answer is "Yes," but doesn't know.

The gun was possessed the day before the incident at school by a friend of the older brother of the boy who brought the gun to school, police said. He left the gun, legally owned by the father of the friend, in the car overnight. That's when the kid found the gun and took it to school. That's when Westyn Scott was as close as any kid should ever have to be to a bullet with his name on it.

Prosecutors said there is no crime that any of the adults involved can be charged with. No laws were broken.

But common sense laws were broken, the Scotts said.

"My husband always had a handgun, locked away," said Claudette Scott, David Scott's mother. David Scott himself said he legally owns a gun that he has locked away in a safe that no one else has the combination to.

It wasn't locked up because that gun in the car was on private property, and nobody broke a law by leaving it in the door of the car.

"That might be the law, but we were this close to preparing for funeral," Teresa Scott said.

In the weeks since the incident, David Scott's co-workers, Claudette Scott's lifetime of friends and acquaintances have expressed outrage that the owner of the gun faced no consequences. In the same weeks, Westyn, whose parents have kept every honor roll certificate and loyalty award and plaque from school, has asked his parents not to go to school.

"After the little boy was found incompetent, he (Westyn) was crying, and we had to beg him to go to school," Teresa Scott said.

David Scott said he knows that sometimes Westyn regrets having told on the boy with the gun, even though what he did may have saved his own life and the lives of other kids.

But David Scott said something powerful: His son knew right from wrong that day, knew a loaded gun at school was wrong, and acted.

David Scott works in machine maintenance. Teresa Scott runs a house-cleaning business. Two parents, together, trying to raise two sons the best they can.

"Who is going to pay for the counseling for my son?" Teresa Scott asked.

Now that school is over for the year and almost two months have passed, there is another thing the Scotts never got from anybody: an apology from the owner of the gun or the family of the child who brought the gun to school -- nobody.

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